The aesthetics of logical form: from the abstract to the concrete Saleem M. Dahabreh, PhD Dept.

of Architecture/Faculty of Engineering and Technology University of Jordan E-mail: saleem.dahabreh@ju.edu.jo Nacy Asaf, University of jordan "Do not teach try to teach design, teach principles." Frank Lloyd Wright Abstract This paper examines those components of the design that are crucial to the design process. The argument is that the aesthetics of an architectural form are directly related to its process of creation and moreover in its underlying logic and logical formation. Thus, this paper aims to read implicit ideas and principles that organize and regulate a design in its intellectual form within the physical form in Smith house by Richard Meier. Through both relational and constructive morphological analysis in 2-D and 3-D drawings, this paper aims to discern underlying ideas and principles that govern Meier's formal language and render them explicitly and constructively. These principles include, among others, interplay of module and geometry, proportionality, and functional and spatial layering. Introduction As designed objects, buildings not only possess physical properties but also a formal structure, a logical form (Peponis, 2005). Logical form coined by Langer (1967) is stretched beyond the common connotation of physical shape; it is defined as the way that thing is constructed, the way it is put together conceptually not materialistically. In other words, logical form is the schema that provides the underlying order and structure for an aspect of an architectural design. (Akin, 2002, p. 410). Logical form not only organizes the material construction and spatial pattern responding to the requirements of the program, but also exemplifies abstract properties and principles of organization of wider import (Peponis, 2005). In that sense, buildings concretize these abstract concepts and shape them rather than represent them becoming, according to Cassirer, symbolic forms (1955). Thus,
as buildings can be looked at as formations with systematic aspects to their structure-the various elements that make up their form are not merely circumstantially brought together, but exist under a systemizing influence (Bafna

2001,

p.

8),

it of

can the

be

argued

that the

through design

the

systematic and

investigation

building

form,

principles

architectural themes can be, at least partially, recovered.

To exemplify how abstract concepts and principles become embodied in the physicality of built form, this paper examines Smith house by Richard Meier. Over his four decade Career, Richard Meier
won numerous awards but more importantly, maintained a consistent but evolving signature style across a wide variety of building types designed by his office most and documented in over fifty-five work publications. Still, research addressed Meier's

qualitatively and few research addressed Meier's work analytically e.g. Clark and Pause, 1985; Peponis, 1996; Dahabreh, 2006; Zamani & Peponis, 2007; Din & Economou, 2007.

Through morphological analysis and 2-D and 3-D drawings, t his

paper not only builds on previous work and clarifies additional underlying themes and ideas to show how these themes and motifs are employed in a particular building, but also presents them as set of 3-D constructive diagrams that registers retrospectively but insequentially how spatial motifs, ideas, and principles operated on a generic form transforming it the specific form of the museum (figure 1). These structural diagrams reveal the potential for forms to notate the underlying forces and relations of their emergence (Somol, 2010). Accordingly, the development of such diagrams, demonstrates the formal ordering of the museum and its systematic organization, and shows clarity and comprehensibility in the transmission of an idea

from the abstract to the concrete.

Figure 1: Sample of Constructive Morphology analysis showing the specification of form of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (Authors)

The analysis shows that Meier's work can be traced back to a parti of a rectilinear block with a decisive frontality expressed through linearity of the design. The overall configuration of the specific form is not random; rather it is highly disciplined through Meiers geometrical ordering by the
use modules, grids, and proportional systems such as the golden section and 1:2. This geometrical order partially visible in the modules and proportions and mostly implicit is not only applied to the structural grid and the overall dimensioning of the rectilinear form but also marks the allocation of all structural grid/s, spinal and transverse walls, and animated forms, both locally in relation to each other and globally in relation to the overall form. It should be noted that most of underlying geometries are not shown in Meier's diagrams.

Furthermore, the analysis shows spatial themes and concepts such as visual layering, processional progression from dark to light, from solid to void, reversal and twin phenomena, tension and compression, and and
promenades architecturale using bridges and ramps as both approach entries to buildings from the outside and as major circulation elements on the inside.

Methodology The systematic investigation of form in architecture falls under architectural morphology. Both relational and constructive morphology were used to analyze the Smith House. The presentation of a building in a constructive manner can also manipulate the constitute components of the spatial structure, thus illustrating analytically the composition of a building or object as well as illustrating the embedded abstract notions. Such an emphasis on the process of form making is asserted by Classie (1975: 19-20) The ability to design is intellectually grounded on the geometric repertoire. Competence proceeds from this set of geometric ideas, spiraling from the abstract to the concrete, from useless ideas to livable habitation. Static sections of this process have often been recognized as

levels of typological abstractionBut unless the levels are tied together into a system by transforming rules-the mental procedures used to move from level to level-then the levels are merely classificatory conveniencesEven without the benefit of advances in linguistics, it should be seen from the traditions of the formalist method that studies of form should answer questions of process The morphological analysis requires an appropriate representational convention that captures the aspects of design that are of interest to the analysis. Morphological analysis here is based on 3-D Axanometric diagrams. Diagrams as ideograms are used because of their dual nature; an abstraction of reality and a representation of an idea or intellectual structure simultaneously operating as an intermedicacy between form and word (Eisenman, 1999) and unlike 2-D drawings, the
the vertical and horizontal, expressing space and axanometric allowing the simultaneously renders plan, section, and elevation, thus collapsing analysis and the object to become congruent (Somol, 2010).

This paper is a part of two broader research programs: the first

concerns studio teaching based on precedent analysis as a didactic tool. Analysis base leads of students any formal into firstly and understanding later the theoretical language performing

subsequent exercises in modifications, extensions, or variations so as to provide them with an applied understanding of the interaction between a design language and a studio project. The second research program addresses design as a cognitive process whereby intentions are formulated in the course of design exploration. show, through morphological analysis of form, that The aim is to the creative

intention behind the designed building can be, at least partially, recovered from the analysis of built form itself.

References:

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